Tim's journal

Taking metaphors too far since 1995

“I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action.” -- Audre Lorde

Do you only dislike bigotry when it comes from people you dislike? (hat-tip to Rohboto)

In private email, I was asked what I thought about Brendan's blog post "Inclusiveness at Mozilla". Some people have been calling this an "apology", perhaps because of this sentence: 'I can only ask for your support to have the time to “show, not tell”; and in the meantime express my sorrow at having caused pain.' This means nothing to me without an understanding of why he caused pain and a commitment not to do it again, both of which are absent.

Marriage is a unique institution in which a man and a woman summon a child into the world – creating a unique tapestry of responsibilities. Our marriage laws are designed to support those responsibilities and are simply inapplicable to any other kind of relationship. Lincoln asked, “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? The answer is four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.” And calling a homosexual partnership a marriage doesn’t make it one.

In any case, Brendan didn't directly address these 22 contributions to McClintock or his 2008 contribution to the pro-Prop.8 campaign on his blog, much less indicate that he no longer agrees with these positions or is doing anything to remedy the harm he did. (Hint: an equivalent donation to an organization that fights suicide among queer kids, or promotes anti-bullying campaigns in schools, would be a good start.)

An apology contains at least three things: an acknowledgment that you did something wrong, an explanation of why it was wrong so that others can see you understand why your actions were wrong, and an explanation of what you are doing to remedy the wrong that you did. Despite writing a few rather lengthy blog posts, Brendan has offered none of these, and thus has not apologized.

Why does it matter? Can't we just leave the past behind? hypatiadotca posted a quotation that I like:"Forgiveness is a link between the past and the future, it's not the restoration of the past prior to the injury." --Louise Arbour

Apologizing for past wrongs doesn't undo the past, but it does help rebuild trust and provide assurance that further abuse (or at least not the same kind!) won't occur in the future. We've seen none of that -- only tone policing and attempts at creating diversions. The message I take away from reading Brendan's blog posts is "I'lll still try to destroy your family, but I won't be rude to you to your face. Keep writing code for me!"

When someone attacks your family and wants forgiveness, you can't just hug it out. It is the responsibility of people who have abused their power to rectify the harm they've done and show that they've learned. It's not our responsibility as oppressed people to understand their motivations (beyond what we already have to do to survive in the world they run!) or to have a nice talk with them where we politely ask for the dignity they've stolen from us. Sometimes people change and stop doing hurtful things, but when they do not, it's because they stand to benefit from hurting people (or at least think they stand to benefit) -- not because we as oppressed people have failed to provide a clear enough explanation of our pain.

Honestly, I'm pretty tired of explaining this stuff and I would rather be writing some code. I have the nagging feeling that I've given the bigots far more time and attention than they're worth, but the issue is less any individual bigot than the way that organizations structurally tend to support and defend bigotry -- even to the point of calling bigots "allies" -- when there is no effort made to counter this tendency. I'm also only human and am disappointed in seeing people who I know are capable of doing better go beyond the minimum necessary for job-preservation to defend their company at the expense of our community.

I wish that I could avoid dealing with sexism, transphobia, and homophobia by logging out of Twitter or not reading blogs, but for me, it's not that easy. I can't earn my livelihood without interacting with people who, at any given moment, may remind me that I'm less of a person and make me pay for it if I object.

Edited to add:PretendMD points out opensecrets.org, which lists several more donations Brendan made, including $1000 to Pat Buchanan in 1991 and 1992 and and $2500 to Ron Paul in 1996 and 1998. We're talking about a total of roughly $10,000 of donations over a period of 19 years, between 1991 and 2010. The man isn't being vilified over one donation.

I am also tired of people who say "can't we leave the past behind?" when they mean "can't we leave the part of the past that you're unhappy about behind, and hang onto the rest of how it benefits me?" If the past is irrelevant, then why is Brendan being offered this job? His achievements and education are all in the past. If we were genuinely going to leave the past behind, everyone's inherited wealth and saved-up bank accounts would vanish, along with our academic qualifications. I have a piece of paper that says that I studied certain things thirty years ago, and I get to use it to convince people that I know and understand certain things now.

As I've said before, if a friend, or someone in my social group, wants me to start fresh because people change, I might be willing to do that: but that's almost never what they actually want. What they mean is that they still want credit for anything good they did for the group, and the sort of social coin that comes with "oh, yeah, Gary, I've known him since we were both teenagers" but with a free pass for anything wrong or stupid they did then. They want the status and pension that goes with "former president" without the baggage of "resigned in disgrace."